Lee carbide Factory crimp Die

**ExFlyinguy** · December 31st, 2018, 05:45 PM

A dude named Hornady is just trying to stir some shit with Lee products

**wanneroo** · December 31st, 2018, 06:15 PM

I use the Lee factory crimp dies for pistol and they work. Whatever magic that happens inside there, in the end I check every single round in a case gauge and I'm trying to think of when I've had a failure with the many thousands of pistol rounds I have loaded.

**Brick** · December 31st, 2018, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by markshere2

My 1911's insist on this step for cast bullets. Otherwise they don't fit in the chamber. My other .45s (ruger and Hi point) will eat them without FCD, but not the 1911s.

So I use them.

Then something else is wrong! I used cast lead bullets for .45 ACP fired from Colt based Clark Bullseye and Hardball pistols and S&W revolver and never had an issue with chambering unless something else was wrong. Standard diameters of .452" for semi-autos (some .4515" long ago) and .454" for the revolver (oversized chamber throats). I'm recently switching away from cast lead to coated bullets.

I did recently run into a very odd problem with some 185 gr Berry plated Flat Nose bullets. I loaded a bunch to test and found it was very difficult to chamber them. I managed to get through the test with some difficulty and started experimenting with different belling, crimps and other variables and found that the bullets weren't seating square in the case, though the amount off kilter would vary. I tried every combination I could, until I decided to change the seating plug from the flat nose as used for SWC to the round nose plug. Voila! Problem solved! Bullets seated normally and all rounds chambered without issue.

**Brick** · December 31st, 2018, 06:58 PM

BTW. I did use the Lee Carbide Factory Crimp die on 9mm but found it generally not needed. My Dillon dies separate the seating and crimping as it is and the crimp is a taper crimp. I do use the Lee Carbide Factory Crimp die for my .357 Magnum loads since it produces a nice strong, tight rolled crimp instead of Dillon's usual taper crimp, which works fine for .38 Special. On retrospect I probably should have gotten the die without the sizer.

**PAwhitetailbowhunter** · January 18th, 2019, 09:55 PM

Yes. I run every caliber I reload through a Lee Factory Crimp die.

**hornady** · January 19th, 2019, 09:02 AM

Well as with every aspect of reloading, ask three reloaders and you get three
Different opinions. I have used the Lee factory crimp dies with my rifle reloads and they have worked very well for me, with cast as well as jacketed bullets. I bought the pistol crimp dies for my auto loader and liked them. So I placed another order for my 5 revolvers I reload for. I loaded up two boxes of 41 Mag, cast bullet rounds last night, and think they did a good job.